Fighting Words

For a couple of weeks now on the podcast, Bob and I have discussed the fact that while everyone's busy pointing out Rick Perry's inability to speak without tripping over his own stupid tongue, no one's paying attention to how asinine and dangerous the things he's trying to say are. Like a couple of weeks ago, when he couldn't remember that he wanted to shutter the Department of Energy, which controls the country's nuclear weapons -- or this gem from Saturday, where he seems to be saying that he wants to end civilian control of our military:

"There is a time and a place for us to intervene, and intervene militarily. But when we intervene militarily, we best make the decision on how we are going to win and how we are going to win convincingly and quickly, send those young men and women with the equipment to win. Don’t let some congressman sitting in an air-conditioned office in Washington DC deciding what the rules of engagement are. … And for us to micromanage them, in a civilian way, without their commanders truly in charge, is absolutely irresponsible and as commander-in-chief of this country I will not let it happen."

I bring this up not because it's so outrageous, which it of course is, and not solely because it's indicative of how far a candidate like Perry has to go to get noticed at an event like the Christian Family Leader "values forum" when he's way down in the polls. No, I mention it because it's crap like this that makes it 100% clear how offensive it is when self-righteous clowns like Glenn Greenwald, Jane Hamsher, etc. make the claim that the Obama Administration is essentially the same thing as any given Republican presidency would be these days, and when they threaten, as Greenwald has, that allowing one of these Perry-esque far-right malignancies into the White House would be a necessary sacrifice if it meant that it would finally bring the country around to how destructive the current GOP model of thinking is.

Right. Because Obama, although by no means someone willing to give the left everything it wants, is the same as a guy who wants to take the reins completely off the U.S. military, who wants to kill the Department of Energy, who thinks the Occupy Wall Street protesters are dirty hippies who are just looking for a handout and who need to go take a shower and get a job (as Gingrich so cleverly intoned on Saturday), who thinks God told him or her to run for office (as half the GOP hopefuls have enthused), who thinks homosexuality is some kind of social disease (Bachmann and Santorum), and who believes that individual towns should be able to ban mosques if they choose (Herman "Toucan Stubs" Cain).

These people are fucking crazy and dangerous. And refusing to accept that because you're all in a huff that the current president simply isn't liberal enough for you is just as crazy and just as dangerous.